How IT Professionals Should Use Traction

The information technology field, with its stereotype of being complicated and advanced, easily impresses customers. Not many can say they know how to design software or analyze databases, so customers are quick to give credit to IT professionals and new products. But information technology’s impressive reputation allows IT professionals to forget an important part of business: traction.

While information technology start-ups can almost succeed on their genius alone, imagine how much more successful they would be they used traction in their business strategies. Follow these steps to start incorporating traction to your technological business ideas:

Step 1: Find Your Hook

To avoid getting bogged down in the complexity of a technology idea, focus on a need. What unique quality does your product or business provide? While you can still include all of that techie genius, you should also focus fulfilling a human need.

Step 2: Find Your Niche

Now that you’ve established a need, find the audience that can be most fulfilled by your product. Start with a narrow group of people, and specify your product to that audience. Then, brainstorm ways your audience could expand. Consider creative ideas for how other audiences could use your product.

Step 3: Build Your Audience

You know your audience, and now it’s time to let your audience know you. When you come to an advanced point in the development process, start advertising to your audience. Make your advertisements broad, but deliver your ads directly to the specific audience at first. This way, you can build traction through a solid core customer group while leaving space for expansion.